Briggs on Sirius Satellite radio

Linebacker Lance Briggs has been difficult to pin down much this season, but he visited with Sirius NFL Radio on Tuesday on "The Afternoon Blitz."

Here are some highlights:

Host, Adam Schein: “When you take a look at this season for the Chicago Bears has it entered your mind, in terms of a possibility, that this is your last season in Chicago?”

Lance Briggs: “Every day. Every day I wake up. Every day I go out to practice. Every day I laugh with my teammates and my coaches and the people of Chicago I know that this could possibly be the last go-around with Chicago. But it’s been that way for the last couple of years that I’ve been here.”

Schein: “Is there conversation about a long-term deal? Do you still crave that? Where does that all stand right now?”

Briggs: “The understanding of the franchise deal here is for it to be a one-year deal here. There was no intention of me [having] a long-term stay here. My feelings toward it, even though I said what I said, I would love to be here given the right situation. If we start talking. Right now we’re not talking. I just play football. That’s my only focus right now, really.”

Host, Solomon Wilcots: “Is there any part of you that believes that you could get that long-term deal playing in this defense where you’ve been so successful? Some people would maybe be hesitant to move on. Is there some part of you that believes this is the best place, this is the right place, and you’d love to get the long-term deal done right here with the Bears?”

Briggs: “You know, my feeling is this: I have to just continue to play football. I can’t let my feelings and all that stuff get into it, you know what I mean, because I’ve been let down in the past and I can’t really control anything. And as far as I’m concerned right not we’re not talking about anything long-term so I can’t expect there to be something long-term here. What I can expect is that we’re going to play a game this week, continue to play well, to play hard and contribute and at the end of the year things will work themselves out.”

On whether he considered holding out for the entire 2007 season:

Schein: “Separate fact from fiction in the off-season because we had your teammates on the radio program and they thought for sure that you were going to hold out, whether that was all of training camp, whether that was the first ten weeks of the season. Were you really considering a holdout for almost the entire 2007 campaign?”

Briggs: “I had every intention on holding out. My teammates probably echoed that because they know me well enough to know I’m not the type of guy to say something and not follow through with it. For me to not follow through with that it took a lot from my pride but it was a lot of reasoning from my agent (Drew Rosenhaus) who said, ‘Hey, you need to go in there.’ And that’s stuff that we discussed amongst each other and at the end of the day it was definitely the right thing to do.”

Schein: “What changed?”

Briggs: “It was a discussion between me and my agent. We probably talked for a couple of weeks straight before I told him that I’d do it, I’d go through with it. The timing, it made sense regardless of how I felt at the time. He wanted me more than anything to just separate my feelings from the business side of it. He said basically just from a business standpoint, hey, look at it as such-and-such and I said, ‘You know what, I trust you. If you say this is right then I’m going to go with it.’”

Schein: “Do you feel disrespected that they’re not talking about a long-term deal for such an integral part of the Chicago Bears defense?”

Briggs: “No, I don’t. I’ve always enjoyed and I’ve always understood my role on the team and on this defense. All I knew, from the beginning, even when I came in and, you know, I’ve been blessed and lucky enough to play next to Brian [Urlacher], one thing I understood is that, hey, this is Brian’s town. And it’s good because it definitely took a lot of attention away from me and allowed me just to play some football. And it let me just build my confidence and say, ‘Hey, I know who I am’ and regardless of, if they don’t want me here for the long term, if Chicago doesn’t want me here for a long-term period, then I have to continue to just play good football and go somewhere where somebody does want me.”

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1 Comment

The Bears should Pay Lance Briggs this time around with substantial
contract.
I was critical of the way he handle the situation last year,but since the season started he has been the one bright spot on this team.
They better hope he wants to come back here.
This is such a goofy organization.